Regressed
by MBScavenger1498
Summary: When he was eight, Uzumaki Naruto met a giant fox kit named Kurama. And then things started to snowball... AU in a multitude of ways, but mostly in terms of Naruto's relationship with Kurama and the abilities he develops because of that. Also, the sharingan is explained in a way that will eventually cause major changes to the story. No pairings planned as I suck at writing romance.
1. Prologue One

**This story is inspired by the extremely original fanfiction "Kid Kyubi" by mellra. Its premise is similar to the "Kyubi is for some reason nice" fics except it's a lot easier not to make Naruto ridiculously broken. Well, enjoy!**

**Regressed: A Naruto AU by MBScavenger98**

Prologue One

Discovery

It was a peaceful night in Konohagakure no Sato. The temperature was moderately warm and a slight breeze ruffled curtains in the late-summer air. Clouds dappled the sky and the moon shone like a great pitted disc of silver in the blackness of night. By all accounts, it was a superbly comfortable climate. This only made it stranger that Uzumaki Naruto was thrashing in his sleep, sweating and moaning as though afflicted by some terrible pain.

This was, in fact, the case. If Naruto had been fully cognizant of his feelings, he might have described the feeling as having brain freeze as someone drilled through his skull. However, he wasn't awake, so what he perceived was a slight headache as he walked though a sewer that felt strangely real.

Naruto had never been in a sewer, but he thought that this must be one. Grime covered the walls, which alternated between crumbling stone brick and patched sheet metal. Water dripped around him and came all the way up to his short, eight-year-old knees. He remembered from that time he'd sneaked into a horror movie that people said 'Hello' in situations like this. It seemed stupid, but he figured he didn't have much else he could do.

"Hello?" An echo was the only reply. The scared, scarred and survival-oriented part of him noted that it was very, very dark in here. And cold… Standing here, he felt like he'd been invaded somehow, though he didn't know what that word meant and therefore couldn't put it to the feeling. Deciding that he had nothing else to do, Naruto looked around, picked a tunnel that felt right and followed it.

A few minutes of sloshing through strangely clean-feeling water later, Naruto came to a large room, bigger than the one he'd appeared in and quite a bit more interesting. He noticed what looked like rats running away and shivered; he hated those things.

Bringing his full attention to bear on the most interesting feature of the room, Naruto noticed that the water was lower than before. Either that or the floor was higher. It was perfectly still around him, with not so much as a single current directing it. At the end of the room, there was a giant set of metal bars held together at their center by a paper tag with something written on it. At the back of his mind, Naruto decided he needed to ask jiji about learning how to read better. Then a pulse went out from the cage, disturbing the mirror-like surface and giving a single, very important piece of information to the small boy outside it, _'There's something in there.'_

He decided the tried and true response was the best one and walked toward the bars to investigate. "Hello?" He heard rustling and a strangely childlike grumbling. Curiosity now seriously piqued, Naruto walked closer to the cage and leaned his head through the bars. "Is somebody there? Do you need help?"

A loud groan greeted his probing and he saw something enormous shifting in the dark recesses of the cage. He squinted into the darkness, trying his best to see whatever it was. From what he could tell, it was orange and furry. "Hello?" A high-pitched growl (or maybe it was a whimper) echoed from the thing and Naruto saw slitted, dimly glowing eyes through the bars of the cage. Slowly, an enormous vulpine face joined the glowing slit-pupiled orbs… And despite it's scale, it was one of the cutest things Naruto had ever seen. Somewhere at the back of his childish mind, he decided he had to give voice to this cuteness.

"FOXY!" A grin spread across his face, the creepiness and general depressing nature of his surroundings completely forgotten in the wake the giant plush toy before him. The fox didn't have any distinct eyebrows, but somehow, you could tell it had raised one at the sheer strangeness of the whole situation, though mostly at the way he'd been addressed. "… What?" Naruto's eyes widened at the incredulously spoken word and his smile broadened. "You can talk? That's awesome!"

For his part, the fox was completely clueless as to what to do. He had never met a human child before. He'd seen them, sure, but their parent had always been too scared of him and his siblings to let them near. At least, after old man Sage died…

Suddenly, he remembered his siblings. Shukaku and Gyuki (his least favorite and favorite brothers respectively) had split off first, going on alone for their own reasons. He still remembered Gyuki saying farewell, asking him to take care of the rest. If Isobu had been able to, he probably would have cried. Son Goku had gone soon after and eventually, it had been just down to him, Matatabi and Chomei. Then it was just the last few weeks drifting in and out of consciousness in this damp cage… And speaking of which, "Hey, kid, do you know how I got in here?"

Naruto looked up and to the left, stroking his chin as though he had a beard. "Uhhhhh… Nope. You want to get out?" The fox nodded exasperatedly and pointedly stared down at the contemplative child. "Have you tried opening the bars?" The Fox gave the enormous gate an experimental push with his paw (which practically sent Naruto into a giddy fit) and quickly realized the surprisingly warm metal wasn't about to move. "No good. Any other suggestions?" Naruto returned to his thinking position and pointed to a large slip of paper between the two barred doors. "There's a random paper with a kanji on it holding the doors together."

The huge orange pile of adorableness furrowed his brow and thought for a moment. What kind of paper could stand up to his strength? The only things he'd ever had a problem crushing were his siblings and the Old Man. And now that he came to think of it, what was with this setting? He'd never seen anything like it. It looked like a cave, but it was also distinctly man-made. There was metal and stone everywhere, but it was very clearly ordered in a deliberate manner… And there was a random little boy who just happened to be there. None of it added up.

His first reaction was to clasp his hands together and stop the movement of chakra inside his body, but when that didn't do anything, he opened his eyes and stabbed his thigh with an extending claw. Nothing. Blood flowed for a moment before he concentrated and healed the puncture.

Naruto watched the display with an innocent interest, grimacing slightly at the blood, but clearly interested by how it disappeared. "Hey, squirt, what does the slip of paper say? And don't lie, because I'll know." Naruto shrugged. "I don't know. Can't read." With narrowed eyes, the creature put out its paw. After a second, something resembling yellow fire came out and formed the kanji for 'Seal.' "Does it look like this?" The boy nodded vigorously, keen to help this strangely friendly giant animal. "Yeah, why?" Hesitantly, the fox put a paw through the bars and nodded to it. "If I help you up, can you pull it off?" Naruto thought for a moment.

"Okay. But before I do… what's your name?" The Fox actually smiled a bit, which was a bit more intimidating than he'd probably intended. "I'm Kurama. You?" The boy smiled back, unfazed by the unintentionally scary expression. "Uzumaki Naruto." And with that, he climbed onto the paw and was lifted up, completely unsuspecting of the gravity of what he was about to do.

**lRl**

The Sandaime Hokage walked calmly to the door of Naruto's apartment and knocked, the barest hint of a genial smile on his lips as he puffed his pipe. It had been a good day so far. No major crises or political problems and a minimal amount of paperwork. It was the closest thing to a day off he was likely to get for a long, long time. When the door opened, he began to greet the small boy in the doorway, but was beaten to the punch. "Hey, Jiji! Did you know the Fourth's my dad?"

Hiruzen promptly quieted the boy and led him inside, setting several privacy seals and waving his day off goodbye. _'I was so close too. I'm getting too damn old for this.' _


	2. Prologue Two

**This is the second AU element of this story, somewhat similar to the foundation of This Time Around by Crimson Skies. **

**Prologue Two**

**Messages**

Uchiha Sasuke had a complicated relationship with his family. He wanted so much to impress them and they wanted so much to be impressed. No child before him had been born with the red eyes of sharingan. No child's eyes had advanced faster than his, within a week of beginning training with them, he had gained his second tomoe. But then the day came when he woke with a great pain in his eyes and he realized that the world was wrong.

Whenever Sasuke looked at the something, he could tell that it was off. He would look at something and feel or see something other than he should. He might look at a point on the clan wall and wonder when it had been fixed, only to remember that it had never been broken. No kunai had pierced the stone and there was no reason for the dread he felt. He managed to convince himself of that and went back to practicing. He had yet to achieve a third tomoe and his father's interest was fickle at best.

Eventually, he'd learned to ignore the different patches in his world, but ignoring something and being truly blind to it are two very different things. A dream of running away from a monster might have been easy to forget, but it was harder when _you_ were the monster. Sometimes he would wake up screaming, the feel of blood coating his forearm still fresh in his mind. No matter how hard he tried to push the visions and feelings away, they always came back. It wasn't until his first day at the academy that he was forced to confront the idea that they might really be real.

That day he met the short blond boy with the smile. Sasuke knew him as well as he knew himself, yet he was different. His smile wasn't nearly so forced, nor so over the top as it should have been. They became fast friends and before long, he was shown the strangest thing of all. The boy could make yellow fire that didn't burn. For a while, he was happier than ever.

But all of that was ended when Itachi murdered the whole clan: their entire family, gone in the space of a night. It was just as mind shattering as you might expect. Naruto tried to help, but a friend was no substitute for a lost family.

In the dark days after the massacre, Sasuke had put the pieces together; it all came together in one soul-shattering moment. Itachi had thrown that kunai, made that crack in the wall that Sasuke had forgotten about so long ago. Shisui had died, just as Sasuke had seen in his nightmares. He could remember the horrible loss of his family, as though he were experiencing it again. He hated himself for forgetting his visions, for forgetting the pieces of the puzzle that would have shown him this terrible thing before it could come to pass. In that moment, he knew that if he could do so, he would change everything… And that was the night the man came to him.

Sasuke found himself in a large, dimly lit room. The walls were red and black stone with blue and white columns at the corners and sliding doors on each side. The floor was fine polished wood intricately carved with ever-shifting designs surrounding a stone hearth. The fire burned low, almost nonexistent and next to it was a man sitting on a wooden stool, glaring at the world as though it were dangling his heart's desire just out of his reach.

He was, quite frankly, a sad sight, with an empty sheath at his hip and his clothes ripped and dirty. The haunted look in his eyes was completely foreign to the boy, having not looked in the mirror since the massacre, but even with all these changes, the similarities were there: the hair that stood up in that strange and singular way, the sharp angle and straight bridge of his nose, the strangely accusatory quality of his black eyes. It wasn't a stretch to figure out who this person was. "You're… me?"

The man nodded and frowned slightly. "When is this?" Sasuke gaped at the person in front of him, not quite comprehending what was going on. "What… what?"

The older him raised an eyebrow and frowned as if to say "Seriously?" He turned away and thought for a moment. "Okay, I'll make this easy… Has Itachi done it yet?" Sasuke nodded after a moment, not trusting himself to speak. His eyes were wide and the older version looked him up and down, his expression coldly appraising. The younger Sasuke thought momentarily how very much this man reminded him of his father. For some reason, he didn't like that.

"I… Well… How?" The man stood up and walked to Sasuke, putting a hand on his shoulder that was more steadying than comforting. "I've been trying to do this for weeks now, sending myself back I mean. Did you receive anything? Memories, feelings, anything?" Sasuke couldn't quite gather his thoughts, but tried his best. "I, uh… Yeah, I think so. Nightmares, weird déjà vu that wasn't really déjà vu, stuff like that." The man narrowed his eyes thoughtfully for a moment before nodding. "Nightmares… Yeah, I guess they would have been those to you. Well, first of all, I'm not actually here. This is just a dream."

Sasuke blinked. "So… this isn't real?" The older Uchiha narrowed his eyes in annoyance. "The mind's just as much a world as reality." Sasuke's brow furrowed for a moment as he concentrated on figuring out how that would work. "Anyway… I can't keep this up for long. It's hard to keep a spacetime rift open for very long, even just for metaphysical things. Here." And with that, he plunged his open palm through Sasuke's chest. There was a rush of pain, though it was strangely centered in his head and not his chest. His mind was in agony!

And then he woke up, his sheets soaked through with sweat. The world was so much clearer. Something… something was different. He could feel it. He'd had a strange dream, but now he couldn't remember it…

Eh, it probably wasn't important. For the first time since his brother's betrayal, though, he felt at peace. Not in nearly as much turmoil as before. As far as he was concerned, the worst possible thing to do now was to stay at home moping when he could be bettering himself. And with that, he stretched, got out of bed and got ready for school.

**I'm not as happy with this second prologue, but it's important for this Sasuke. I thought about introducing the concept over the course of the story, but then decided against it. In these situations, I like to set out what's different, then show its effects. But anyway, thanks for reading! Leave a review if you feel like it!**


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